1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to wheel and track driving equipment and, more particularly, to wheel and track driving equipment in which wheels for general-purpose vehicles are used in combination with tracks for special-purpose vehicles (e.g., military and other various industrial use-purpose vehicles) to provide a selective driving performance, thus making it possible to drive the vehicle regardless of the condition of the road surface and to use the wheel and track driving equipment in both general vehicles and special-purpose vehicles.
2. Description of the Related Art
The general driving equipments for various vehicles are divided into wheel driving equipment and track driving equipment. The former is widely used in general vehicles such as normal motorcars and the latter is used in special-purpose vehicles, including military combat vehicles and various industrial vehicles (e.g., excavators).
The wheel driving equipment includes, as illustrated in FIG. 1 (for 4-wheel drive vehicles), a transfer machine 10 receiving the engine driving force, propeller shafts 20 provided at the front and rear of the transfer machine 10, respectively, four wheels receiving the torque from the propeller shafts 20, a differential gear 40, and a driver shaft 50.
In operating the vehicle, the wheel driving equipment provides comfort and high speed driving only on the road surface in good condition and hardly performs the driving performance with serious problems in regard to the safety on the rough road surface such as rugged mountainous trail, obstructive trail (e.g., stairway), snowy trail or desert. Thus the vehicle with the wheel driving equipment may slip on the road and, for the worse, overturn on the rough road surface. Due to lack of stability and hill climbing ability, the vehicle encounters a serious problem on the marsh or obstructive road and has to request for external help without overcoming difficulties.
The track driving equipment includes, as shown in FIG. 2, starting wheels 60 for transferring the power to the front part of the vehicle, a plurality of bogie wheels 70 and support wheels 80 provided on the inside bottom and top of the starting wheels 60, and a band-shaped shaped track O with guide pins P winding the outside surface of the starting wheels 60.
In operating the vehicle, the track driving equipment may have a good driving performance even on the rough road surface such as rugged mountainous trail or plain owing to its relatively low grounding voltage and strong tractive force but requires considerable power consumption because of its structural feature of driving the track. The track driving equipment also has a problem in regard to the deterioration of ride comfort under the driving noise and vibrations of the tracks in friction with the road surface, as well as off tracking. Such noises and vibrations may cause another problem that disables the high speed running of the vehicle.
The above-described conventional wheel or track driving equipments are limited in their use to either general vehicles or special-purpose vehicles. There is thus a need of wheel and track driving equipment having a general-purpose driving performance irrespective of the condition of the road surface.
It is, therefore, an object of the present invention to solve the overall problems with the conventional driving equipments and to provide wheel and track driving equipment in which the running components (e.g., wheels) only used in normal vehicles are incorporated with those (e.g., tracks) used in special-purpose vehicles to provide a selective driving relationship and thereby enable a wide driving performance regardless of the type of the vehicle or the condition of the road surface.
It is another object of the present invention to provide wheel and track driving equipment in which a link connection having a multi-bending structure is provided between a pair of wheel and track to provide a seesaw effect of up-and-down motion in the symmetric structure, thereby readily overcoming the obstructions and running the vehicle on the rough road surface such as rugged ground and stairway.
To achieve the objects of the present invention, there is provided wheel and track driving equipment including a front wheel driving section and a rear wheel driving section provided at the rear of the front wheel driving section, wherein the front wheel driving section includes: a first running unit including an integral group of a wheel and a track wheel; a second running unit including an integral group of a wheel, a front drive gear and a track wheel; a pair of connections including a track and a front link connection between the first running unit and the second running unit; and a buffer unit, wherein the rear wheel driving section includes: a third running unit including an integral group of a wheel and a track wheel; a fourth running unit including an integral group of a wheel and a track wheel; a fifth running unit including an integral group of a wheel, a rear drive gear and a track wheel; a pair of connections including the track and a rear link connection between the third and fourth running units and the fifth running unit; and a buffer unit(e.g., torsion bar).